Fergus Kerr on Charles Taylor

Kerr's book Immortal Longings is a magnificent treatment of the subject of the self in contemporary philosophy and theology. Of Charles Taylor he says (rightly I think):

...Taylor insists that some explanatory frameworks give us a better sense of reality than others. True, it is not easy to judge one superior to another without appealing to epistemological foundations that stand outside all frameworks, or merely to list the technological achievements of Western science (say). There can be no going back on the lesson of modern philosophy: we have no access to sources of knowledge independently of whatever conceptual scheme we have in place. But pragmatic success is not a good enough criterion either: for one thing, what counts as success may vary from one society to another. p. 137

Kerr's Wittgenstein and abortion

In Fergus Kerr's really interesting last chapter of his book Theology After Wittgenstein he makes this interesting application of Wittgenstein's thought, namely that if a 'metaphysical' concept of the self disappears the objection to abortion may actually be strengthened. This is because the human embryo already is human, and not just potentially one, or one in relation to a metaphysical soul:

The embryo already exists in the closest relationshop of physical dependence on an adult member of our species. Our being human has to be redecsribed as our being animals of a certain kind sharing from the beginning certain possibilities of interaction and response at the very physical level of vital functions. Paradoxically enough, the more animal we remember ourselves to be, the weightier the theological objections to abortion and embryo experimentation might become. p. 177

[As a side comment, I read last year Ray Monk's really moving biography of Wittgenstein. His story captured my attention... particularly when, as a character, he is compared to a man like Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein stands out as an almost saintly and mystical figure. Well, up to a point! And the photos of Wittgenstein are truly haunting...]

Theology After Wittgenstein - Fergus Kerr

OK, this is one of those books that I should have read years ago, fair enough. Another one of 'em. It is enjoyably and unexpectedly quite chatty.

Kerr contends that modern theology is imbued with a thoroughgoing Cartesianism - an individualistic view of the self as a disembodied mind. This Cartesian turn, which is not as Augustinian as everyone says, was one of Wittgenstein's great targets: his great white whale you might say. Kerr is quick to show that, actually, Christian theology ought never have been so ready to swallow the Cartesian internalisation of the self.

He makes some fascinating applications of this shattering of Cartesianism:

There is nevertheless a central strain in modern Christian piety which puts all the emphasis on people's secrte thoughts and hidden sins. It gets to the point, in some traditions, that the worst sins of all become those that the individual performs entirely by himself. Wittgenstein recalls us... to the historical contingency of this belief. ... Why should our secret thoughts be more important than the thoughts that come out only too effectively in what we say and do? Are our most secret thoughts always so deep that only God could understand them? Are our most secret thoughts so much more interesting that the thoughts that we communicate? Are our hidden sins so much worse than the sins that we commit against, and with, other people, out in the open, for everybody to see? p. 173

Evangelicalism and Catholicism share this inward turn, it seems to me, though in different ways. Is it a fair cop?